Saturday, 30 July 2016

July 30, 2016- Rest. Relax. Repeat

This morning we woke up and went downstairs to the Wave Lounge in the hotel for breakfast. As a Platinum Starwood Member, Bill can choose extra points per night, free breakfasts each morning, or a free gift which was a luggage tag. Bill chose the free breakfasts. It was a huge breakfast buffet with everything from smoked anchovies and olives, to meats, cakes and doughnuts, croissants, scrambled eggs, crepes, fruits, granola and yogurt, nuts, smoothies, juices, and fruit infused waters. Per person it is 33 Euros (about 49$ Canadian at our current exchange rate). It was pretty good, but Bill and I never would have paid 100 bucks for it.

April caught the morning sun rising from our room

April caught the morning sun rising from our room

Our breakfast, compliments of SPG

We went back to the room and dressed in our swimsuits and went down to the Bliss Spa area where there is a small pool with nice lounge chairs and less people. It's an infinity pool that looks out over the view of Barcelona and the beach (always packed with people, even in the morning and into the evening). We warmed up by the pool on our comfortable lounge chairs and then went for a refreshing dip in the pool, swimming right up to the edge (it's glass so you can even go underwater and see through the view of the city, albeit blurry from being underwater).

The lovely, warm Catalonian sun.

April enjoying the infinity pool

Bill enjoying the infinity pool

We returned to our chairs and ordered two salads for lunch. April's was a quinoa salad and Bill's was a falafel salad. April's salad again had arugula or as they call it in Britain, rocket. It seems to be the kale of Europe. But we think kale is a better salad material. Maybe it just doesn't grow well here. Neither salad was that great.

We spent some more time in the sun, reapplying sunscreen after we took another dip. Eventually, the tall tower of the hotel blocked the sun from the pool in the mid afternoon and we went back to our room to shower off. Bill had a snooze, while April caught up on her travel journal.

We wanted to check out the club at the top of the W Barcelona, Eclipse, to which we had a free pass, so we went to dinner later than usual, almost 9:00 pm, which is of course early by southern European standards. The restaurant was basically empty until past 9:00 pm when people slowly started to filter in. When we left the restaurant at 10:45 pm it was jumping (and it's Saturday). We had prawns and tuna tataki as a starter, we shared monk fish and sea bass as mains, and Bill had cactus sorbet in a fruit soup for dessert, while April had chocolate brownies in chocolate sauce with spicy chocolate ice cream and vanilla ice cream. Everything was excellent. The Spanish really know how to cook seafood. We've noticed that the service in this hotel is absolutely excellent. The training program must be superb.

All dressed up for dinner

April before dinner with her new scarf

Appetizer: tuna tataki and prawns with peach gazpacho

Monk Fish

Sea Bass

Chocolate bliss and cactus sorbet in a blood orange soup

We went back to the room and worked on the blog and killed time, so that we wouldn't be at the club, Eclipse, before the really good people watching began. FYI this is considered "research" when you're a writer.

We had to go down to the lobby and see the woman who guards the separate elevator that goes up to the 26th floor where the club is. She looked at our free pass and gave us each a plastic wristband that looked like a Euro Trash version of our hospital bracelets back home. We bought a sparkling water each and sat down in the EDM side of the club (the other side, R&B, looked busier and was smokey). There was almost no one there at 11:45 pm when we arrived. People slowly filtered in, but it was not very busy and almost no one was dancing. Most people just sat around or stood around in groups with the occasional lame dancer. The music was disappointing. We waited for 1:00 am which is when Google said the crowd peaks there. But it just sort of increased somewhat and stayed lame. We went over to the R&B side and tried to dance to one song but it was packed and we were being jostled. And we were like "I'm too old for this shit, I'm out." We had to take the separate elevator back down to the lobby and then get on one of the other ones to go back up to our room. Not what we expected from one of the "hottest" clubs in Barcelona, but the view was pretty. The DJs in the club were just not that creative or good at mixing or song selection.